Kees
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Posts
- 4,619
- Likes
- 26
I have been curious for Ultrasones for a very long time, but I never managed to lay my hands on them for a decent price until recently.
A couple of weeks ago I finally got to listen to them.
Since there is not a lot written about them here, I though it would be nice to share my experience with you.
Here we go:
Intro & conclusion
This is not a review. I don’t claim the authority to be able to do that..
This is just my personal impression of my experience with the PROline 750 headphones.
So you don’t have to read all the rest if you don’t want to I will start at the end:
DO I LIKE THESE PHONES?
YES. I LIKE THEM A LOT.
ARE THEY PERFECT FOR ME?
NO. I’ll tell you below why not.
ARE THEY PERFECT FOR YOU?
COULD BE, because they do a lot of things VERY good.
WHAT OTHER PHONES CAN I COMPARE THEM WITH?
They are in my opinion on par with Sennheiser HD650, AKG K701, ATH AD2000, Beyer DT880. Maybe more, but these I know.
WHY THEY ARE NOT PERFECT FOR ME:
TWO main flaws:
Bass reverb in a specific frequency area that, at times and in specific situations can ruin SQ.
A sharpness in the middle and upper frequencies that can make the sound signature a bit artificial.
ONE smaller flaw:
Voices and some instruments (violin, guitar) often sound recessed compared to their accompaniment.
These flaws are not always prominent and often unnoticeable. Some types of sounds or music are more prone to their effects than others.
Also: besides these flaws there is a whole list of things they do excellently and most of the time the pros outweigh the cons easily.
But not allways….
My personal conclusion:
For large symphony orchestras, small Jazz combos, solo instruments (particularly piano) or fusion (and similar music) the PROline 750 are absolutely great.
For rock or vocals: I don’t like them at all.
It took some time to figure out what the deal was, for me, with the PROline 750s.
I listened to a large variety of music when I tried to put a finger on the sound signature of these phones.
General remarks
Look & feel: I like it. No nonsense sturdy, honest plastic in dark blue and depression grey.
Fit: good enough for me. I’m used to the clamping force of the HD650….It doesn’t bother me that they do clamp rather tight.
Used equipment:
Source: Marantz CD12/DA12 LE.
Amps: MF X-can v3 “Pinkie version”, Rudistor NX-33 and Corda Prehead MkII SE.
I did not compare them side by side to my other phones.
SOUND PARTICULARS
What I found after a lot of listening, burn-in and thinking is the following:
Reverb in the low area around 80 Hz. (?)
Causes a wooly weak bass note (in this specific area), specifically for kick drum.
Sound in this area gets weak and without detail. With NO IMPACT at all.
This is BAD for PrAT in rock music.
This also takes the life out of part of the bass (specifically with upright bass), since some of the bass notes get to be loose and without detail.
In this area I cannot discern a kick drum beat from a plucked upright bass: BAD!
The bass presence is rather heavy. This echo-effect causes it to be too heavy sometimes.
Extension in the low frequencies: extremely low.
Extension in the high frequencies: as high as I can hear them (16Khz).
There is a slight sharpness in the upper mids and highs. This is no sibilance.
It is more like a lack of roundness. This is very similar to ss vs. tube sound.
This attributes to very clear articulation, but it also “deadens” the sound a bit. You could call it neutral if you like. It gives you an enormous amount of detail, but on the whole that somehow does not contribute to a “life” feeling. It makes the overall sound slightly artificial.
I have no particular like or dislike for it. Sometimes it works great (piano music) and sometimes it can be annoying (artificial sounding voices).
Soundstage and imaging is really very good in height and width.
In the depth it does some strange tricks sometimes by placing a singer behind drums for instance.
The overall impression is of listening to a band or orchestra in a hall with peculiar acoustics: bad for some, good for others.
Acoustics is something I can easily adjust to or ignore, but still…..
The effects on music
Here I give some specific examples of what I listened to.
I could have given a lot more examples, but they are a good illustration of what I listened to when I came to the above conclusions.
Piano solo: Among the best I ever heard from headphones.
The sound of this instrument does not confront me with the bass echo.
The extreme detail and impact-full presentation emphasize the fact that a piano is a percussion instrument.
The end result I find extremely pleasing.
Clean sparkling highs and articulate lower register.
The sound is full-bodied throughout.
Tonal balance is perfect to my ears.
Music listened to:
Listz: Funerailles, played by Naum Grubert.
Mozart: Piano Sonatas played by Ivan Moravec (a bit more thin and weak).
Chopin played by Vladimir Horowitz.
Orchestra: Very good. The orchestra gets an homogenous sound.
The bass section gets the right impact and body.The reverb may actually do some good in this respect and is less obvious in the whole.
Balance is good: no section stands out.
Placing of instruments and soundstage is very good.
Music listened to:
Beethoven: Fifth piano concerto played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Beethoven: Symphony no 3, played by Frans Bruggen and the orchestra of the 18th century.
Mahler: Symphony no 1, played by Lorin Maazel and the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Chamber music: The acoustic echo-effect of the bass is very present here.
Here the effect is not so good.
Bass tends to drown violins in one-tone notes.
Music listened to:
Vivaldi: La Stravaganza played by Rachel Podger
Uccellini: La Bergamasca, played by The Arcadian Academy.
Voices: The artificiality is most present here. The PROlines do not suggest the presence of a person.
Voices sound very recessed.
Music listened to:
Berlioz: Les nuits d’ été : Frederica von Stade.
Aretha Franklin: Respect.
Valerie Joyce: New York Blue.
Diana Krall: The girl in the other room (way less recessed than the other recordings!!!)
Violin: The effect is the same as with voices. I can’t hear the body of the violin.
Music listened to:
Vivaldi: La Stravaganza, played by Rachel Podger.
Bach: Sonatas and partitas for solo Violin, played by Lucy van Dael on baroque violin.
Guitar: very articulate. Sounds virtuoso rather than lifelike.
Very clear tone. I can hear a lot of details. That can be very engaging, but I miss a bit of warmth: the highs are a tiny bit strident.
Sometimes I hear the reverb-effect.
Over all still very good.
Music listened to:
Villa-Lobos: Music for solo guitar, played by Norbert Kraft.
Leo Kottke: Guitar Music.
Bert Ostlund: Pathfinder.
Bass: Electric bass sounds absolutely awesome.
The upright bass is a bit different story. Some parts (the upper regions) sound wonderful, but the low notes can drown all else if there is an “else”. Solo they sound absolutely amazing.
In a trio or quartet: drums, bass, piano and saxophone or trumpet the other instruments have more than enough impact to survive this.
The result can be absolutely great, like on Summerwind.
If the bass is supposed to accompany only, it can end up wrong.
It is something I could easily live with though. Pros weigh heavier than the cons here for me.
Music listened to:
Stanley Clarke: If this bass could only talk.
Marcus Miller
Jaco Pastorius
Ray Brown: Summerwind
Charles Mingus: Ah Um.
Organ: Very impressive. The bass fits here. The reverb totally disappears in the natural reverb and echo of the organ sound itself. The detail and articulation the 750 provide here truly make music out of a massive wall of sound.
Music listened to:
Bach: Orgelwerke played by Ton Koopman.
Rock: No drive.
Weak kick drum.
The sloppy bass makes the whole sound rather flat and not engaging.
The whole sound is drowning in loose indiscernible bass notes.
This can vary for different recordings: on some it is disastrous (Fleetwood Mac: “I’m so afraid” on “The Dance”, one of my all time favorite rock tracks). On some recordings it is not so bad: The Band’s “The Last Waltz” sounds pretty good on the whole.
Music listened to:
Fleetwood Mac: The dance.
The Band: The last Waltz.
Santana: Abraxas
David Bowie: Diamond Dogs, Heroes ….
Lots more.
Jazz: Just a small sample. Also because Kind of Blue is a well known reference to a lot of people.
Bass is just a bit overwhelming sometimes.
The sound is intimate enough to hit the right mood.
The intro bass on “So What” is far too weak and powerless.
Trumpet is brilliant though.
On the whole not bad, but not the best either.
On “Sketches of Spain”, which is orchestral, everything works a bit better, but on the whole everything sounds somewhat powerless.
Music listened to:
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain.
The Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet: Voodoo
Mingus: Ah Um.
Fusion / Jazz Rock: Amazingly good. These phones are excellent for this kind of music.
All details come across crystal clear.
All sound effects are there and all registers from the highest highs to subterranean lows have presence.
Music listened to:
Herbie Han****: Crossings
Miles Davis: Amandla
Lots more
Well: that's it folks. For now.
Thanks for reading.
Herbie got dismembered.
___________________Added later:________________________________
I have to add that this also varies with different amps. That is why I tried them on three different amps, to make shure what I heard were the phones and not the amp.
The reverb/bass effect was by far the worst on the X-can v3. The tube sound gave them a bit warmth in the highs though.
On the Prehead the reverb was noticable, but not nearly as much as on the X-can. The recessed voices were also better. On the other hand were the highs more strident and the artificiality more prominent.
The Rudistor gave the most balanced performance.
__________________________________________________ ___________
A couple of weeks ago I finally got to listen to them.
Since there is not a lot written about them here, I though it would be nice to share my experience with you.
Here we go:
Intro & conclusion
This is not a review. I don’t claim the authority to be able to do that..
This is just my personal impression of my experience with the PROline 750 headphones.
So you don’t have to read all the rest if you don’t want to I will start at the end:
DO I LIKE THESE PHONES?
YES. I LIKE THEM A LOT.
ARE THEY PERFECT FOR ME?
NO. I’ll tell you below why not.
ARE THEY PERFECT FOR YOU?
COULD BE, because they do a lot of things VERY good.
WHAT OTHER PHONES CAN I COMPARE THEM WITH?
They are in my opinion on par with Sennheiser HD650, AKG K701, ATH AD2000, Beyer DT880. Maybe more, but these I know.
WHY THEY ARE NOT PERFECT FOR ME:
TWO main flaws:
Bass reverb in a specific frequency area that, at times and in specific situations can ruin SQ.
A sharpness in the middle and upper frequencies that can make the sound signature a bit artificial.
ONE smaller flaw:
Voices and some instruments (violin, guitar) often sound recessed compared to their accompaniment.
These flaws are not always prominent and often unnoticeable. Some types of sounds or music are more prone to their effects than others.
Also: besides these flaws there is a whole list of things they do excellently and most of the time the pros outweigh the cons easily.
But not allways….
My personal conclusion:
For large symphony orchestras, small Jazz combos, solo instruments (particularly piano) or fusion (and similar music) the PROline 750 are absolutely great.
For rock or vocals: I don’t like them at all.
It took some time to figure out what the deal was, for me, with the PROline 750s.
I listened to a large variety of music when I tried to put a finger on the sound signature of these phones.
General remarks
Look & feel: I like it. No nonsense sturdy, honest plastic in dark blue and depression grey.
Fit: good enough for me. I’m used to the clamping force of the HD650….It doesn’t bother me that they do clamp rather tight.
Used equipment:
Source: Marantz CD12/DA12 LE.
Amps: MF X-can v3 “Pinkie version”, Rudistor NX-33 and Corda Prehead MkII SE.
I did not compare them side by side to my other phones.
SOUND PARTICULARS
What I found after a lot of listening, burn-in and thinking is the following:
Reverb in the low area around 80 Hz. (?)
Causes a wooly weak bass note (in this specific area), specifically for kick drum.
Sound in this area gets weak and without detail. With NO IMPACT at all.
This is BAD for PrAT in rock music.
This also takes the life out of part of the bass (specifically with upright bass), since some of the bass notes get to be loose and without detail.
In this area I cannot discern a kick drum beat from a plucked upright bass: BAD!
The bass presence is rather heavy. This echo-effect causes it to be too heavy sometimes.
Extension in the low frequencies: extremely low.
Extension in the high frequencies: as high as I can hear them (16Khz).
There is a slight sharpness in the upper mids and highs. This is no sibilance.
It is more like a lack of roundness. This is very similar to ss vs. tube sound.
This attributes to very clear articulation, but it also “deadens” the sound a bit. You could call it neutral if you like. It gives you an enormous amount of detail, but on the whole that somehow does not contribute to a “life” feeling. It makes the overall sound slightly artificial.
I have no particular like or dislike for it. Sometimes it works great (piano music) and sometimes it can be annoying (artificial sounding voices).
Soundstage and imaging is really very good in height and width.
In the depth it does some strange tricks sometimes by placing a singer behind drums for instance.
The overall impression is of listening to a band or orchestra in a hall with peculiar acoustics: bad for some, good for others.
Acoustics is something I can easily adjust to or ignore, but still…..
The effects on music
Here I give some specific examples of what I listened to.
I could have given a lot more examples, but they are a good illustration of what I listened to when I came to the above conclusions.
Piano solo: Among the best I ever heard from headphones.
The sound of this instrument does not confront me with the bass echo.
The extreme detail and impact-full presentation emphasize the fact that a piano is a percussion instrument.
The end result I find extremely pleasing.
Clean sparkling highs and articulate lower register.
The sound is full-bodied throughout.
Tonal balance is perfect to my ears.
Music listened to:
Listz: Funerailles, played by Naum Grubert.
Mozart: Piano Sonatas played by Ivan Moravec (a bit more thin and weak).
Chopin played by Vladimir Horowitz.
Orchestra: Very good. The orchestra gets an homogenous sound.
The bass section gets the right impact and body.The reverb may actually do some good in this respect and is less obvious in the whole.
Balance is good: no section stands out.
Placing of instruments and soundstage is very good.
Music listened to:
Beethoven: Fifth piano concerto played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Beethoven: Symphony no 3, played by Frans Bruggen and the orchestra of the 18th century.
Mahler: Symphony no 1, played by Lorin Maazel and the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Chamber music: The acoustic echo-effect of the bass is very present here.
Here the effect is not so good.
Bass tends to drown violins in one-tone notes.
Music listened to:
Vivaldi: La Stravaganza played by Rachel Podger
Uccellini: La Bergamasca, played by The Arcadian Academy.
Voices: The artificiality is most present here. The PROlines do not suggest the presence of a person.
Voices sound very recessed.
Music listened to:
Berlioz: Les nuits d’ été : Frederica von Stade.
Aretha Franklin: Respect.
Valerie Joyce: New York Blue.
Diana Krall: The girl in the other room (way less recessed than the other recordings!!!)
Violin: The effect is the same as with voices. I can’t hear the body of the violin.
Music listened to:
Vivaldi: La Stravaganza, played by Rachel Podger.
Bach: Sonatas and partitas for solo Violin, played by Lucy van Dael on baroque violin.
Guitar: very articulate. Sounds virtuoso rather than lifelike.
Very clear tone. I can hear a lot of details. That can be very engaging, but I miss a bit of warmth: the highs are a tiny bit strident.
Sometimes I hear the reverb-effect.
Over all still very good.
Music listened to:
Villa-Lobos: Music for solo guitar, played by Norbert Kraft.
Leo Kottke: Guitar Music.
Bert Ostlund: Pathfinder.
Bass: Electric bass sounds absolutely awesome.
The upright bass is a bit different story. Some parts (the upper regions) sound wonderful, but the low notes can drown all else if there is an “else”. Solo they sound absolutely amazing.
In a trio or quartet: drums, bass, piano and saxophone or trumpet the other instruments have more than enough impact to survive this.
The result can be absolutely great, like on Summerwind.
If the bass is supposed to accompany only, it can end up wrong.
It is something I could easily live with though. Pros weigh heavier than the cons here for me.
Music listened to:
Stanley Clarke: If this bass could only talk.
Marcus Miller
Jaco Pastorius
Ray Brown: Summerwind
Charles Mingus: Ah Um.
Organ: Very impressive. The bass fits here. The reverb totally disappears in the natural reverb and echo of the organ sound itself. The detail and articulation the 750 provide here truly make music out of a massive wall of sound.
Music listened to:
Bach: Orgelwerke played by Ton Koopman.
Rock: No drive.
Weak kick drum.
The sloppy bass makes the whole sound rather flat and not engaging.
The whole sound is drowning in loose indiscernible bass notes.
This can vary for different recordings: on some it is disastrous (Fleetwood Mac: “I’m so afraid” on “The Dance”, one of my all time favorite rock tracks). On some recordings it is not so bad: The Band’s “The Last Waltz” sounds pretty good on the whole.
Music listened to:
Fleetwood Mac: The dance.
The Band: The last Waltz.
Santana: Abraxas
David Bowie: Diamond Dogs, Heroes ….
Lots more.
Jazz: Just a small sample. Also because Kind of Blue is a well known reference to a lot of people.
Bass is just a bit overwhelming sometimes.
The sound is intimate enough to hit the right mood.
The intro bass on “So What” is far too weak and powerless.
Trumpet is brilliant though.
On the whole not bad, but not the best either.
On “Sketches of Spain”, which is orchestral, everything works a bit better, but on the whole everything sounds somewhat powerless.
Music listened to:
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain.
The Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet: Voodoo
Mingus: Ah Um.
Fusion / Jazz Rock: Amazingly good. These phones are excellent for this kind of music.
All details come across crystal clear.
All sound effects are there and all registers from the highest highs to subterranean lows have presence.
Music listened to:
Herbie Han****: Crossings
Miles Davis: Amandla
Lots more
Well: that's it folks. For now.
Thanks for reading.
Herbie got dismembered.
___________________Added later:________________________________
I have to add that this also varies with different amps. That is why I tried them on three different amps, to make shure what I heard were the phones and not the amp.
The reverb/bass effect was by far the worst on the X-can v3. The tube sound gave them a bit warmth in the highs though.
On the Prehead the reverb was noticable, but not nearly as much as on the X-can. The recessed voices were also better. On the other hand were the highs more strident and the artificiality more prominent.
The Rudistor gave the most balanced performance.
__________________________________________________ ___________
